I 100% trust my life better to two human pilots than to the same flight on an aircraft with a remote control system capable of taking over the aircraft's control against the wishes of those in the cockpit.
A reasonable concern, but I'm surprised at the degree of negative reaction to this— for example, who has the last word on control of a manned spacecraft? Obviously they are controllable from the ground, but can the personnel onboard take that back?
I feel like there's at least scope for an interesting discussion on what a takeover could look like and how the process could be abused and/or protected from abuse.
For example, what if it was something that could be requested using a "call for help" mechanism available elsewhere on the craft? Perhaps there could be buttons on opposite sides of the galley that would activate the distress call, so two flight attendants would have to collude for it— that would call the attention of the ground station to a pilot-incident-in-progress who could then receive telemetry and begin to investigate what was going on and go through some kind of clearance process to unlock the final takeover key that would let them disable the cockpit if deemed necessary.
I feel like there's at least scope for an interesting discussion on what a takeover could look like and how the process could be abused and/or protected from abuse.
For example, what if it was something that could be requested using a "call for help" mechanism available elsewhere on the craft? Perhaps there could be buttons on opposite sides of the galley that would activate the distress call, so two flight attendants would have to collude for it— that would call the attention of the ground station to a pilot-incident-in-progress who could then receive telemetry and begin to investigate what was going on and go through some kind of clearance process to unlock the final takeover key that would let them disable the cockpit if deemed necessary.